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Celebrity Slam - Tough guy Tekashi69

Celebrity Slam is supposed to be a fun feature. We mock low-stakes idiocy as it springs from the words and deeds of the rich and famous. We all do dumb stuff, but celebrities do their dumb stuff in the spotlight, so we get to poke a little fun. That’s usually all there is to it.

But sometimes, famous people get into REAL trouble. Sometimes, they commit actual crimes. They engage in for-real illicit activity. Often, the nature of these crimes means that they aren’t appropriate for a space like this one. As a rule, we steer clear. As a rule.

But holy crap, have you SEEN some of this stuff with Tekashi69?

The rapper has been behind bars since before Thanksgiving – November 18, to be exact. He, along with his recently-fired manager and two other associates, was arrested on federal racketeering and firearms charges. He was taken into custody by ATF agents in New York City.

According to the indictment – which runs 17 pages – Tekashi and his crew conspired to commit multiple crimes. We’re talking robberies, drug deals, shootings – a real broad array of bad guy stuff. Among the accusations, he’s believed to have been directly involved in an incident back in April in which he and others robbed some rival gang members at gunpoint. There was also a shooting incident at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn that same month. In addition, federal officers believe Tekashi and company were heavily involved in selling drugs – pot, heroin, MDMA and fentanyl – all over the city.

All in all, Tekashi is faced with six counts. The most serious of the lot is discharging a firearm while committing a crime; that one comes with a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years and could even mean life in prison. As of press time, he had still been denied bail – the court deems him a flight risk even under the onerous terms proposed by Tekashi’s legal team.

He’s not getting a trial date until September 4 – that’s right, almost a year from now – but he’s already raising some issues as far as his incarceration is concerned. Tekashi was moved to a new detention center just before Thanksgiving – a spot notable as being used for inmates looking to cut deals as potential witnesses. This was after spending the previous week in general population – not the safest spot for a prisoner with the combination of high profile and deep gang ties that Tekashi brings to the table. However, reports are that other inmates are complaining because Tekashi is getting what they perceive as special treatment, right down to the sorts of prisoners who are permitted to interact with him.

Yeah. It’s … a lot.

We’ll be the first to admit that we don’t know a whole lot about this guy beyond what we’ve gleaned from writing about him previously; for instance, we certainly wouldn’t recognize a song by the dude. Really, what we knew before all this was:

He has a ridiculous name.

He has a ton of face tattoos.

He has a real gift for starting and marinating beef.

Guns tend to get fired in his vicinity.

That’s pretty much it. And now, with these further developments, well … we know that what we thought we knew was actually pretty accurate in the grand scheme of things.

Look, there have been plenty of famous people who have committed serious crimes. Some of those crimes aren’t meant to be mocked. These are not those crimes.

This whole thing reads like a gangster wannabe’s wish list, only this d-bag decided to actually follow through to show how hard he is. It’s like these morons can’t differentiate between the fantasy and the reality; he almost certainly did this solely to maintain some sort of image. It’s either that or he’s just a sociopath. Regardless, he’s an idiot.

Can you imagine throwing a career away on this kind of stupidity? Sure, we’ve never heard his music, but there are some out there who clearly enjoy it. And now, instead of being able to continue making music and potentially becoming an actual big shot, he’s going to sit in a cell until we’ve all basically forgotten about him.